Engineer Opens New Worlds For Handicapped

Actually, Sprigle is one of a few hundred rehabilitation engineers nationwide, only 50 or 60 of whom, as he, are involved in service delivery to patients, rather than research.

He's at the Good Shepherd Home and Rehabilitation Hospital on a two-year grant from the Pennsylvania Office of Vocational Rehabilitation - and is bringing a new dimension to the Allentown facility and the Lehigh Valley.

And those who have already had Sprigle's help during the three months he's been at Good Shepherd would unequivocally label him and this new dimension "one in a million."

While Sprigle says the primary objective of the grant is to expand the driver evaluation unit at Good Shepherd. He is designing and building a pre- driving system to more accurately test the strength handicapped individuals to determine driving potential. He says he's already been able to help a number of clients with problems.

Things, he says, as simple as rewiring wheel chair controls or resetting a lap trap to provide more comfort and accessibility for a handicapped person.

He has provided pressure evaluations for spinal cord injury patients, teaching them what the evaluation means and how to correct pressure problems. "I draw a picture as I'm observing. I can tell, for example, if they're leaning to one side," he says, picking up a sketch he had just drawn.

"If a therapist or speech therapist wants a device (maybe a person has a weakness and requires visual or audio feedback), something not on the market, I can get involved in that," he adds.

"I am being used as a consultant, too. If someone wants to purchase a computer system they can tap my data base for the types of computers suitable for their disabilities." He also works on adaptation of computer accessing.

Then there are the modification specifications for vans for disabled drivers he can work on, and recommendations for seating and positioning of paraplegics and quadriplegics.

"I can't do everything," he says quite honestly. "I'm not a mechanical genius. Part of this job is knowing when to say no."

Of his field, Sprigle says: "This offers a service delivery aspect by far the majority of engineering does not offer. It offers the contact with people, and possibly one of the best team approaches to medicine - working with doctors, psychologists, nurses, therapists, the patient. Medicine is not set up like that a lot of times."

Sprigle, good natured, fond of jokes and admittedly not the serious type, says he truly enjoys working with people.

He had intended to enter the medical field, "But I didn't like the pre- med training, so I became an engineer." A Florida native, he graduated from the University of Florida, Gainesville, with a degree in engineering science and mechanics.

Undergraduate work in the field of neonatology led him to the field of rehabilitation engineering.

"I found out about rehabilitation en- gineering by mistake and this seemed to be the opportunity to be an engineer and not lose touch with the the actual person," he says. He went on to the University of Virginia to earn his degree, technically in biomedical engineering with an emphasis on rehabilitation.

Basically what rehabilitation engineers try to do, in a nutshell, Sprigle says, "is increase the function and efficiency of the body while maintaining the overall health of the body.

"What I have over the therapist," he continues, "is time, and the technical background."

Sprigle says he sees his job as"working to become obsolete. I get in and help in developing a product and fade away." He says, as with the driving device he is working on with Good Shepherd Industrial Services, he always uses readily available, inexpensive parts so he won't have to be consulted 10 years down the road when someone can't find some obscure part.

He says he really enjoys working with handicapped. "I do have a big problem with wheel chairs and some people in the chairs and outside the chairs viewing them as a bad thing. The key to anyone's independence is mobility and the wheel chair gives us that!

"Something like cerebral palsy is still as common today as in 1900. We're not getting any better and we have to work at that, affecting the quality of life. That's what Good Shepherd is here for, as I see it."

Sprigle says he would like to become more involved in research programs down the road. He says he's itching for details on a proposed local fitness trail for handicapped; is excited about a Good Shepherd resident's quest for independent living quarters for handicapped, and is interested in more prevention work in the industrial area.

For now, he is helping to prove that engineering and the medical field can mesh well. "There is no such thing as the one-person health caretaker any more," he says.